Parkimeter Wins CECOT Award

The Catalan organization CECOT representing over 6000 entrepreneurs, awarded itnig startup Parkimeter with the award for best new company.

Once every year CECOT hosts what they call “the night of the entrepreneur” in Barcelona. Here they award different kind of local entrepreneurs, and this year it was co-founders of Parkimeter, Jordi Badal and Ferran Gatius turn to get honored.

The startup that allow you to reserve, pay and find parking spots for your car, was created in 2013, and has been experiencing massive growth in both users and parking facilities the last years.

Soon 500 places to park

As of today, the company offers their users over 380 different locations to park their cars.

Parkimeter’s plan is to reach 500 parking facilities by 2017 in over 80 cities in Spain.

Parkimeter has parking facilities all over Spain.

And it seems like the service was needed, as the startup has parked over 50.000 cars the last three years. To make the parking experience even better, Parkimeter will in a matter of weeks release the new app so you easily can book your parking through your phone.

Even though the area around Barcelona is the one with most parking facilities at the moment, Parkimeter plans for expansion. They raised a seed round this June and plans to start their expansion to the rest of Europe by next year.

“How parking has been changed through technology, is similar to how the travel sector was disrupted 15 years ago,” say co-founder of Parkimeter Jordi Badal.

Smart sustainable cities

Parkimeter recently spoke at the SmartCity conference InFocus 2016, held in the Chinese city of Yinchuan this September.

This year’s CECOT event was also focused on building smart and sustainable cities, that are able to offer services that bring improvements to the lives of its citizens.

The Parkimeter team in their headquarters in Barcelona.

At the CECOT conference smart cities like New York and Dubai presented their plans for the future along with Barcelona represented by Parkimeter which introduced their initiatives to facilitate parking according to people’s needs, optimizing traffic, reducing the visual impact and aligning itself with the policies of mobility each city has.

But Parkimeter does only care about the environment, they also care about your wallet, as Parkimeter’s facilities is up to 50 percent cheaper than normal street parking.

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This post was written by Sindre Hopland, media manager at itnig.

Prepare For The Future Of Marketing — Build Your Content Factory

There are few startups or young companies that doesn’t have a blog these days. We all know the benefits of producing content in one shape or another, but exactly how to do it the right way?

There are several ways to establish yourself as a quality content provider, and some things you need to avoid when interacting with people through content.

Build Credibility and expertise

Content marketing is more about showing of your knowledge, to help people, than to sell something.

A common mistake companies often do, is to produce their content like a very good-looking ad for their product. Wrong.

A blog article will usually never lead to a sale or a direct purchase, it’s about building credibility as an expert in your field. So when your potential customers is ready to make a purchase he or she knows what brand to trust with his wallet.

How content marketing doesn’t work.

This means that you can’t fake being an expert if you really want to get something out of your content. This blog you’re reading right now is not existing for you to buy or invest anything in itnig.

We want to be a real resource for the startup community, so that our startups benefits from the reputation itnig has as a good provider of useful knowledge.

If you’re company full of experts or people with a lot of experience you should take advantage of their knowledge, and present it through your content.

If you’re a startup, with a young team without experience, you can bring in external people from your network, experts or others for an interview, but present it through your brand, so both you and your external expert benefit from it.

Stay Relevant

Staying in touch with trends is getting harder, as trends are changing every day.

One of the ways of staying in touch with what’s relevant for your audience is creating a balance of current and evergreen content.

To only cover current trends is great when it’s hyped, but it’s a big risk to take if it fades away in a month or two. In other words, many hours of hard work can be wasted. To stay relevant you also need to present evergreen content; videos & posts that explain timeless topics which have been discussed, and will be discussed for the next ten years:

All of these articles are evergreen, and will bring people to the itnig blog for the next years. With a balance between this kind of content, and current events in the industry you’re in, you’ll be sure to create a brand that shines of relevance.

Avoid content shock

We are reaching a point in content marketing where publishing 500 word articles for SEO isn’t really working anymore.


As everyone is creating content we need to know our customers or users much better. Do the research, and instead of creating tons of short posts, create longer content with higher value. Also because Google now favors that kind of content. The average word count of a Google first page result is 1,890 words. Also Medium favor longer content, as a 7 minute read will rank better in their algorithms.

If you’re building or running a company I guess you spend a good amount of time getting to know your customers. Use this information to shape your content.

It’s however worth mentioning that if you’re doing video content, the rule of length does not apply as much as with written or audio content. If it’s not a super interesting keynote, try to keep it shorter, around 1–2 minutes, especially in social media.

Across platforms

There’s tons of places on the internet where you can promote your content.

Medium, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Snapchat, LinkedIn, the list goes on..

The key is again to know your customer and your content. All platforms has their target audience and one or more types of content that performs well. Medium is obviously good for text, especially longer form. Facebook and Youtube is great for video. Twitter is great for spreading the word fast.

The different social media channels all serve their particular purpose, and you can’t stick to only one. When itnig writes a medium article we always try to include:

  • Videos
  • Photos
  • Social media content

It should be a goal to do this in all posts, but it’s hard and resource demanding. It’s however these posts that people read and share the most.

Now, go build your own content factory!

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This post was written by @sindre hopland, media manager at itnig, and based on Scott Mackin’s talk at itnig this fall.

Why Barcelona Is Turning Into An European Hub For Gaming Startups

A total of 120.000 people attended the Barcelona Games World conference in 2016.

Barcelona Games World 2016 recently ended as a success with over 120.000 visitors over four days. It was the first year the congress was held, and entertained its attendants with over 1000 gaming stations, 30 mini conferences and 371 interviews with prominent game developers.

But this is only one of several elements that makes Barcelona one of the most vibrant hubs for gaming startups in Europe.

Big players

Most technology hubs around the world has big players both stealing & contributing to the environment. In some ways you can say that the big players validate the ecosystem with their presence.

As London houses major fintech startups such as Transferwise, Mondo & Atom, Barcelona has several big gaming startups like King (Activision), Social Point (local), Digital Legends and Tutotoons which have raised millions of euros the last years and engages 100 of millions of people through mobile and desktop games every day.

There’s also been a long time presence from veterans such as Ubisoft, Gameloft and other heavy hitters.

There are also a community of many AR and VR startups and companies that can be beneficial for game developers looking to create games in this space. Not to talk about betting games startups such as Playfulbet with over 6 million users worldwide, that have a huge community of Esports enthusiasts.

Pol Ruiz, CEO and founder of Playfulbet attended the Barcelona Games World, and told me how the conference was one of the greatest gatherings of gaming industry ever taking place in Barcelona.

The city is playing along

But big companies and innovative startups are not enough in the long run, to foster a true hub for gaming startups in Barcelona you also need supporters: gamers.

Luckily, Barcelona is also home to thousands of gamers. Not only shown through the Barcelona Games World conference, but through the annual Esports event ESL Expo, that attracted over 5000 people last year.

ESL Expo Barcelona attracted thousands of people.

Also local authorities are playing along, as Barcelona Activa, the local government arm supporting startups in the region has been backing an accelerator called Game BCN, aiming at accelerating gaming startups. There are also several gaming startups with funding and loans from the government operating from the city.

But it’s not only the local government who’s playing along, also the technical universities offer education focused on game design and development, both and bachelor and master degrees.

One of the biggest events in Barcelona every year is the Mobile World Congress, with over 100.000 attendants from all over the world. The speakers for the MWC 2017 was released last week, and the top headliner was John Hanke CEO of Niantic Labs that created Pokémon GO.

There are few statistics about the gaming industry in Barcelona, but in Spain there are about 450 development studios, with about 5.000 employees, where 40% of the workers are in Catalonia, according to Asociación Española de Videojuegos.

According to the AEV there are around 110 game studios located in Catalunya, and the number is growing every year.

What to expect from the future?

So with all these gaming related companies and institutions, can we call Catalunya or Barcelona one of Europe’s growing gaming hubs?

I think it’s safe to say that if the community continues to grow like it does now, we’ll see a lot of great companies coming out of the city.

For now, it makes it easier for the existing startups and entrepreneurs to find a friendly community and support for their ideas.

Why Videos Are Key To Promoting Your Startup

Video, video, video, the Facebook feed will be all videos in five years.

That’s the words of Facebook vice president for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, Nicola Mendelsohn earlier this year.

Vice president for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, Nicola Mendelsohn.

The last 3–4 years we’ve seen videos explode in social media. With the emergence of Snapchat and Vine the rest of the social networks followed, and there’s now no social networks that doesn’t take video seriously.

By next year (2017) video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic, according to Cisco.

This means that if you’re doing marketing for your startup, you need to start looking for someone who can handle a camera.

Digesting information

This is what it’s all about — digesting information in a time where information is overflowing.

Videos and pictures helps you present a story faster and smarter than through written words:

  • Faster: You only need a minute to explain a concept, an idea or news through video, as the audiovisual combination lets a person take in more information compared with only audio or text.
  • Smarter: All social channels are adapting in way that favors video. Research has shown that the chance of people clicking on a link more than doubles by using a pictures or a video in the post. It’s also smarter, because video is convertible, meaning that if you shoot a video, you can make that into both written content and audio content.

And if you’re not convinced by my words, Axonn Research found 7 in 10 people view brands in a more positive light after watching interesting video content from them.

It’s important to add that video is not only great for attracting clients and customers from your own channels, but your chance of being featured in media outlets and tech blogs, also increases a lot with the use of video.

VR and 360 degrees

You’ve hopefully understood by now that video will essential to spread the word about your startup.

But if you want to be in front of the trend, you should look into VR and 360 video as well, according the Facebook VP Mendelsohn:

In five years 360 videos will feel very common, as it today is a bit new and interesting.

The big question is when virtual reality will become mainstream. In other words, when is it worth to dedicate resources to VR marketing?

The 2016 Virtual Reality Industry Report estimates that there will be 135.6 million VR headset in use by 2025, of which 122 million will be mobile. So if you want to be in front of the trend, you should at least put it in your notebook as something to watch out for.

There’s no doubt where to invest your marketing budget the next years.

Too expensive?

Renting a professional video team has been, and still is way too expensive for a startup. However, as the video gear is getting cheaper by the year, and the quality and user friendliness increases, most people can learn how to make a corporate video, and that at a reasonable price.

I won’t go into what kind of gear you should use for your films, but a fast google search will get you on the right track.

To get you going with videos – check out and subscribe to the itnig Youtube channel.

Som examples:

Technical events: the most essential content is the code the presenter is using, that’s why you should emphasize on recording the screen during the presentation. But to not miss the human touch, it’s works great to include a small video bar inside the code screen:

Video podcasts: As mentioned before, the content is always more important than the quality, but for longer content, quality also counts. Using different camera angles that both captures the whole room, but also close ups, is key. It’s also important with good sound quality, which doesn’t need to be expensive at all:

Interviews: Make sure you have a decent microphone, and if the interview object is sitting the same place the whole talk, make sure to use a tripod. Use open questions, and not cut too much:

 

How Playfulbet Grew To 400K Followers On Facebook And 300K On Twitter

Even though Playfulbet’s product is e-sports and sports betting games, our success in capturing thousands of users and followers has not been left up to chance.

Behind Playfulbet there’s a young team that first and foremost love what they do, as we get to work with our biggest passion — games. And it feels even better to share these insights when our devotion is bearing fruit, as our social media following have been growing exponentially the last few years.

We recently reached a couple of milestones in our social channels, as we reached 300.000 followers on Twitter and 400.000 followers on Facebook.

As mentioned earlier, nothing is left up to chance, and at times we’ve been overwhelmed by the massive growth from some of our campaigns, especially as Playfulbet has been expanding internationally.

LOVE

We love our followers, and have great respect for everyone that follow our social media channels. And here lies some of the key-elements to our growth, we have a big emphasis on entertaining our audience every single day.

It’s important to see you social media as an extension of your product, as our social channel is an extension of Playfulbet’s betting platform.

We focus on communicating with our audience, and not just broadcasting a message. In this we use all kinds of media tools like pictures, video, GIF’s, surveys and contests that can steal a smile or a reaction from our followers.

If you have a product to leverage through the platform, use it for what it’s worth. We give away our virtual money (Coins) that users can take advantage of on the platform to win prizes.

The precious feedback

To maintain a high interaction rate in your social channels is key to keep growing. As we are a sports betting platform we base a lot of our content on actual sports news. In that way we’re staying relevant to our followers, and not only entertaining. I think this is one of toughest nuts to crack — stay relevant.

If you’re interacting with your audience every day, you’ll be sure to get feedback, which is very valuable. It’s important that you follow up on all your feedback, as your brand will be more credible, and your followers will be more faithful if they feel they’re being heard.

Jorge Badenes, content manager at Playfulbet — an itnig startup.

Having depurated non-toxic social networks where the user feels comfortable also serves as a real time barometer of what’s going on in your company. At Playfulbet the users may ask for support about prizes they’ve won or they aspire to win, they report cheaters and people who don’t play clean by using multi-accounts, which are forbidden, or they simply alert us about canceled or suspended matches they want their coins back from. All of this is super helpful for our team, and makes our platform better.

Right now we’re engaging our followers all across Europe and in Southern America, giving away hundreds of prizes every month, while creating entertaining content. Follow us for some inspiration on how you can do the same, because our team rocks!

Playfulbet, the adventure continues..

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This post was written by Jorge Badenes, content manager at itnig startup Playfulbet.